


The Scientific Method

by Pigzxo



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 05:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5445167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigzxo/pseuds/Pigzxo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gansey gets wasted and proposes an experiment to figure out whether or not he's attracted to men. Ronan doesn't exactly let him forget about it after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scientific Method

            Ronan Lynch, for once, was not the drunkest person in Monmouth Manufacturing. Although, how the hell that happened, he had no idea. He’d been halfway through a bottle of vodka when Gansey stumbled home, burping.

            “Since when the fuck do you drink?” Ronan asked.

            Gansey’s hazel eyes looked up at him, fuzzy with alcohol. Gansey managed to cover his next burp as he made his way further into the room. “Ronan, just the man I was looking for,” he said. “I need your help with something.”

            Ronan stared at him. He was sitting on Gansey’s bed, a half empty bottle of vodka between his thighs, and his friend had yet to scold him for it. However, if he had, he would’ve been a huge fucking hypocrite, so maybe Gansey’s lack of anger shouldn’t have given Ronan the sense that the Earth had spun out of orbit. “You’re drunk,” he said.

            Gansey nodded, flopped down beside Ronan on the bed. “Yes. That was part of my research.”

            “Research?”

            Gansey nodded, serious about his work even when plastered. His professor expression came on, slightly melted, and he said, “I left Monmouth tonight to perform an experiment of sorts and, while out a bar to conduct said experiment, I felt my courage failing me, so I had a couple of drinks.”

            “What’s your definition of a couple?”

            “Four. Five... Do shots count?”

            Ronan nodded.

            “Five,” Gansey said, nodded. “But unfortunately, liquid courage or not, I failed to complete my experiment.”

            “And now you want me to help you complete it?” Ronan said. “If it involves getting plastered, I’m halfway there.” He lifted the vodka bottle and took another swig.

            “It involves kissing.”

            Ronan choked on the vodka, brought the bottle down from his lips. A hand to his face, cold alcohol dripped from his fingers, he managed, “What?”

            “It involves kissing,” Gansey repeated, as if he thought Ronan hadn’t heard him. His eyes were surprisingly steady, if clouded.

            Ronan stared at him, not sure he was drunk enough for this. Or maybe he had already passed out and was now hallucinating. He licked his lips. “And what’s this experiment that requires kissing?”

            “I’m trying to find out if I’m attracted to guys. So I thought the logical course of action would be to drive into town, find a bar, and pick-up a guy,” Gansey explained. Ronan tried hard not to laugh at him. “Unfortunately this was much harder than anticipated, required copious amounts of alcohol, and now that I’m unsteady on my feet, I no longer feel comfortable approaching a stranger and asking him to conduct this experiment with me.”

            “So the next logical course of action was to come home to me?”

            “Yes, exactly.”

            Ronan stared at his friend for a moment. “You do not I’m not attracted to you, right?”

            “Of course,” Gansey said. “But, as the only person I know who’s gay and who I trust with this experiment, I thought you might be willing to help me out.”

            “You’re a weird drunk, Dick.”

            Gansey blinked, his reckless enthusiasm for all things testable diminishing. “Is that a no, Ronan?”

            Ronan hesitated, then took another swig of vodka. He set the bottle down on the floor and said, “No, it’s not a no, Gansey. Come here.” And, before his friend could move, Ronan took his face in his hand and pulled him forward.

            Whatever Gansey had been drinking, it wasn’t the good stuff. Sprite and cheap vodka, most likely. His lips were slippery and bitter, non-responsive. Ronan backed off after a second and said, “Well?”

            “Inconclusive. Try again.”

            “Are you actually going to help this time?”

            Gansey sighed, like actually kissing back would be a huge inconvenience. But he nodded and gestured for Ronan to try again. Ronan licked his lips, pulled Gansey forward. His fingers curled through the short brown hairs at the back of Gansey’s neck and he pressed his lips chastely to Gansey’s. This time Gansey returned some pressure, his lips tense.

            “You need to relax,” Ronan mumbled.

            “I’m drunk.”

            “But apparently still lucid.” Ronan shifted back and grabbed the bottle of vodka off the floor. He handed it to Gansey. “Drink.” When he hesitated, Ronan added, “It’s your experiment.”

            “Alcohol might skew the results.”

            “Alcohol is already skewing the results. Plus, this’ll taste better than whatever the hell you were swigging at that bar.”

            “Vodka and sprite,” Gansey replied, then downed the vodka. He swallowed, his face screwing up with the burn, and he coughed. “This tastes good to you?”

            “Better than your girly drink,” Ronan replied. “Ready?”

            Gansey shook his head. He took another long glug of the vodka, waited a moment, his eyes to the ceiling, then nodded. “Ready.” Now he leaned in, his hands on Ronan’s cheeks, pricked by stubble, and his lips moved more easily. Still sloppy, still wet with alcohol, but at least this was something Ronan could work with.

            He moved closer to his friend, wrapped his hand around the back of Gansey’s neck. With a little coaxing –his tongue licking Gansey’s bottom lip, a nibble at his skin– Gansey’s mouth opened and Ronan skidded his tongue into his mouth.

            Gansey’s hands fell from his cheeks, down the front of his shirt. Warm fingers pressed into the cotton of his t-shirt. Ronan moved closer, one of his legs wrapped around Gansey, the other linked on top of Gansey’s over the side of the bed. He pulled at Gansey’s hair and felt his friend gasp into his mouth.

            Ronan pulled out of the kiss, a surprisingly hard task given Gansey’s sudden aggression. Still too close, wrapped up in each other, noses rubbed together, Ronan asked, “That good enough?”

            “A larger test group is always better,” Gansey replied and, before Ronan had time to tell him that meant he needed to kiss someone else, Gansey’s lips were on his again. Warm from contact, Gansey flooded him and pushed him back on the bed, careful not to let Ronan’s head hit the bed frame. Gansey’s fingers moved under Ronan’s shirt, skittered across his abs.

            Ronan let out a small moan and Gansey’s lips slipped from his, marked the length of his jaw and moved down the side of his neck. Ronan forced himself to breathe and ignore the friction of Gansey’s legs against his, his teeth on the soft skin of Ronan’s neck. “You’re gonna leave a mark,” Ronan whispered, without much force behind the accusation. Gansey’s lips were getting him drunk. “Gansey,” he said again, and lifted Gansey back to him, their lips together again, hungry tongues rough on each other.

            Trying to keep his hand to himself didn’t last much longer for Ronan. Gansey was on top of him, not shy about grinding their hips together or scraping his nails down Ronan’s back. So Ronan stopped being shy about his hand on his friend’s neck, fingers creeping across his collar bone, undoing the buttons of his shirt. Gansey’s chest was cold but smooth, strong. He needed to stop this “experiment” before it went too far, Gansey sure as hell wasn’t going to, but it was nice to be touched, to be kissed.

            Gansey got bored with his lips, went back to his neck. He sucked wet spots across its length, Ronan too wrapped up in the moment to tell him to stop. He turned his head and kissed the side of Gansey’s cheek, angled his head to get his neck, bit the flesh and felt Gansey moan against him.

            Then Gansey got bored with his chest and his hands dipped lower, thumbs beneath the waistband of Ronan’s jeans. His hands pulled at Ronan’s jeans, bringing them down off his hips, the fabric tight against Ronan’s bones. Ronan opened his mouth to say something, to protest, but Gansey kissed him again, rough and hard enough to take all the breath out of his lungs.

            Gansey’s hand rubbed over Ronan’s crotch, his fingers skilled, sloppy. Ronan swallowed his moan, lifted his chin to move Gansey’s lips from his. But then he was back on his neck, back to hickeys, back to small bites that Ronan was sure were drawing blood. “Gansey,” he said, harsher than he intended it. The hand on his crotch slowed, fingers soft through denim, but didn’t move away. “Gansey, come on, stop.”

            Gansey moved his hand, raised himself to look Ronan in the eyes. “Why?” he asked, hazel eyes big and melted.

            “Because,” Ronan said. He heaved in a breath, tried to get his head screwed on straight. “You’re drunk, I’m horny and drunk, and I think it’s safe to say at this point that you’re not straight.”

            Gansey frowned. “Based on what evidence?”

            “Based on...” Ronan shut himself up and shook his head. “Okay, fine. You wanna pretend we’re in Chem right now? I’m game. Get up.” He pushed Gansey back and sat up, waited for Gansey to settle back. “What’s the main question of this experiment?”

            Gansey stared at him for a moment, then said, “Whether or not I’m attracted to men.”

            “And your hypothesis was?”

            “I’m probably not gay.”

            Ronan neglected to say that didn’t quite answer the question at hand, mainly because he was trying to use the scientific method as a way to calm down his body, not because he actually gave a crap about science. “All right,” he said. “Experiment’s over. What did you observe?”

            “Arousal,” Gansey said.

            “You were fairly aggressive, seemed like you were having fun.”

            Gansey nodded.

            “Conclusion?” Ronan prompted.

            “I’m not straight.”

            Ronan nodded and stood up. “Goodnight.”

            “Sure you don’t want me to finish you off?” Gansey said.

            Ronan stared at him for a second, met hazel eyes that seemed far from lucid. He shook his head. “You really are a weird drunk, Gansey.” Then he walked back to his room and rolled in his covers all night, uncomfortable.

 

Gansey stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. Small bite marks marred his neck, tiny enough to be bug bites. He rubbed his hand across them and flushed at the memory of last night. His head ached from the harsh bathroom lights and he had already drunk enough water to put all of Henrietta in a drought. But the one thing he couldn’t fix with water and Advil was the red marks on his neck.

            Ronan appeared in the mirror, framed by the doorway. His neck was much worse for wear. Large spots, black and brown like bruises, covered his skin. When he stepped closer, his hand on his neck like he was inspecting the hair on his chin, red marks, bite marks, just like Gansey’s own, were visible on his skin.

            “You owe me a scarf,” Ronan said. He patted Gansey’s shoulder and headed for the toilet, unzipping his pants as he went.

            “You’re gonna do that in front of me?” Gansey asked.

            Ronan gave him a look, his tongue in his cheek. “Yeah, man. I do it all the time.”

            “Right,” Gansey said. He shook his head to clear it and looked back in the mirror. He felt no different than he had before last night, before his brilliant idea for his experiment. He cleared his throat. “There’s no food here. You wanna go out for breakfast?”

            The steady stream of Ronan’s urine hit porcelain. “You take all your girlfriends out to breakfast?” he said. Gansey turned horrified eyes on him and Ronan laughed. “You need to calm the fuck down, Gansey. Just a joke.”

            “I’d prefer if we just forgot the whole thing ever happened,” Gansey said.

            Ronan shrugged. “Fine by me.”

 

Ronan might have cut Gansey some slack had he not been so goddamned weird about the whole thing. And he definitely would have cut him some slack if he hadn’t been so easy to tease. He could come home drunk in the middle of the night and ask his best friend to make out with him for scientific purposes but he couldn’t handle the aftermath of it. He couldn’t even handle the aftermath _badly._ Deny, deny, deny seemed to be Gansey’s coping mechanism of choice.

            And, to be fair, the first time Ronan had made a joke about it in public had been a mistake. Gansey had been at the wheel of the pig for a fourth consecutive hour and was beginning to slip across the centre line. After yanking the wheel back, Blue said, “For the love of God, can’t you just stay straight?”

            “He really can’t,” Ronan replied and the look he got in the rear-view mirror, the horror mixed with admonishment, the edge of a blush on Gansey’s cheeks, was pure gold. Making Gansey blush had to be his true calling. It was God’s work, really.

            His next opportunity to embarrass Gansey came a day or two later when Cheng asked Gansey whether or not he ever wanted to murder Ronan for not shutting up. Before Gansey had the chance to defend Ronan, Ronan said, “Oh, trust me, he’s figured out plenty of ways to shut me up.”

            “Well, then, what’s the worst part of living with him? His constant speeches?”

            “Those have only served to make his tongue stronger,” Ronan replied. Gansey made an unnecessary and quite loud noise of anger while he turned bright red. “What? It was a _joke_.”

            There were, of course, easier ways to get Gansey to blush that didn’t require Ronan to be set up for a joke. One of his personal favourites was mentioning vodka in any given context, because just the word made Gansey’s ears go red. He was also particularly fond of cutting into Gansey’s conversations about his research and experimentation and subtlety mentioning in a proud voice Gansey’s _hands-on_ approach to topics he was passionate about. The little spots of red that appeared like cherries on Gansey’s cheeks were adorable enough for most people to just think he didn’t like the praise.

            And Ronan might have had too much fun being introduced to new people as Gansey’s “friend.” It was too easy to get in a shot just by saying, “I think partners would be a better word for it.” or by simply saying, “Best friends, really. We do everything together.” And every time Gansey gave him a look of pure spite but said nothing. Because Gansey, no matter how much he blushed, still pretended nothing had happened.

            Then there were the easiest shots to take. And those were insulting Gansey’s ability in bed at any given opportunity, whether the opportunity presented itself or not. If Blue said, “I might be curious to kiss Gansey,” Ronan could easily reply, “It’d be a lot like kissing a wet fish,” without giving anything away. If Adam happened to mention how good he was working with his hands, Ronan would say, “Gansey’s quite bad with his.” And without any provocation at all, he liked to say, “It’s odd that Gansey’s named ‘Dick’ when his is so small.”

            Gansey, blushing, blustering, and adamantly against ever admitting even to Ronan that anything had ever happened, was Ronan’s favourite form of Gansey so far.

 

Gansey purposefully took the seat furthest from Ronan. It had been a week since they had hooked-up and there were no lingering feelings, no awkward tension, nothing that spoke of anything deeper between them. He just preferred to stay away from Ronan because Ronan was a fucking asshole.

            He had no doubt that he was in for more reminders of their drunken night together, but maybe if he kept his head down Ronan would shut up quickly. It’d taken little time for him to realize that the only reason Ronan did it was to make him blush, but it was hard to hide his face quick enough not to make Ronan laugh. Everyone ordered their food and the first ten minutes went by without a hitch.

            Then Blue started talking about some guy at her school who had a crush on her and Ronan let out a deeply annoyed sigh. “What?” she snapped.

            “Nothing,” Ronan said. “It just must be _so hard_ to be the only straight person at the table.”

            Gansey’s heart stopped.

            Blue scoffed. “Just because you’re the only gay person here—”

            “Depends how you define gay,” Ronan said. “Have you met Adam?”

            Between the words “met” and “Adam” Gansey’s brain had seized to function. He took a deep breath at the end of it and Adam said, “Fuck you.”

            “You know you want to,” Ronan replied and Adam laughed.

            The conversation moved forward from there, Gansey careful to keep his tension to himself. He curled his hands into fists and then uncurled them, leaned his forehead up against the diner’s window. A few minutes later, Ronan flicked a fry at him.

            “Join the party, Gansey,” Ronan said. “God knows you’re the life of it.”

            Blue snorted.

            Ronan corrected himself, “You have to get a little vodka in him first but...”

            Gansey felt himself going red, but he was done with it. So done with it. “Ronan,” he snapped. He met Ronan’s eyes, the easy smirk on his lips. He knew from his heated cheeks that he was red as a Valentine’s Day heart but he was past caring. “Would you stop it?”

            “Stop what?” Ronan asked, fake innocent.

            Gansey took a deep breath, settled his palms flat against the table. He addressed Adam and Blue instead of Ronan. “I think we would all agree that we’re a close group of friends and that we should be able to share things with each other. And in the interest of not ruining any of our friendships, I think there’s something that Ronan and I should share with you.” He licked his lips. “About a week ago, we conducted an experiment where— would you stop laughing at me?”

            Ronan covered his mouth with one hand and gestured for Gansey to go on with the other.

            Gansey sighed. “We conducted an experiment because I was... unsure about possibly being attracted to men. So I asked Ronan if I could kiss him as an experiment.”

            Adam and Blue stared at him. Ronan was bright red with held in laughter and, maybe now, Gansey got why it had been so entertaining for him to make him blush at every given opportunity. Finally, after a long moment of silence, Adam cleared his throat and said, “The conclusion?”

            Gansey licked his lips. “I’m attracted to men.”

            Ronan snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

            “Shut up,” Adam said. “No one made fun of you for coming out.”

            Ronan raised his hands in surrender, not an ounce of shame in his expression. Gansey was pretty sure Adam kicked him under the table to get the smirk off his lips.

            “Girls too,” Gansey said when he caught Blue’s eye. “So I would like to officially announce that I’m pansexual.”

            “You could probably please pans,” Ronan said, which earned him another kick under the table. This made Gansey blush again and he knew that as long as his blood vessels continued to betray him, the torture wasn’t going to end anytime soon. Then Ronan said, “He’s pretty rough too. You see these hickeys?” He pulled down the collar of his shirt for the rest of the table to see and Blue let out a low whistle. Gansey, for the first time since the whole ordeal had begun, found the heart to laugh at something Ronan said.


End file.
